Insprired by this thread.
I had a professor once who taught us that the real reason the nukes over Nagasaki and Hirosima were able to bring about the surrender of the Japanese was not because of the death and destruction that it caused, but because the Japanese saw the large explosions as a sign from a higher power that it was time to stop fighting. He referenced the willingness of Japanese soldiers to fight to the end and that the nukes would never have scared them into surrendering.
I’ve never heard this theory anywhere else, and I believe my professor had taken this idea from a book of some sort.
Anyone know anything about this theory? Any truth to it?
I’ve never heard of that. I really doubt it as the Japanese were not a bunch of backwards people.
Hirohito, was very passive throughout the war but after the first bomb was used he became much more vocal and after the second A-Bomb he took a very active part in to convincing the government to surrender. Previously he pretty much kept out of everything letting the militarists run the show.
The professor was right in that the Japanese would’ve most likely continued to fight on even after the first two bombs and even if more had been available to use or were used. But Japan wasn’t a democratic by any means, so the Japanese would’ve fought on or surrendered as they did what they were told, not what they believed.
There is evidence that many of the upper elite in the Japanese government were not convinced until the second bomb was used to prove that it wasn’t a fluke.
While I don’t doubt there were some who saw this as a sign, the Japanese were not ignorant of physics and while they weren’t actually working on atomic weapons, they were well aware they were possible (at least in theory), so there was no reason for them to think someone had actually succeeded in making one
You might want to try searching the Axis Forums a great discussion site for WWII (and most other military history questions)
I’ve never heard it either. Maybe the idea was that there isn’t going to be a glorious battle (not even shooting AA guns, really) once nukes enter the picture?
Anyways, any chance your professor was alive at the time, or grew up in a household with a veteran of the Pacific Theater? I’ve known more than a few who were quite convinced that “they’re not like us” - which is why someone might ascribe such a silly reason.
The Japanese military had a design for a kamikaze tank buster in case of a homeland war. That’s how far they were willing to take it. The soldiers were taught that allied forces do not take prisoners so they would kill themselves rather than surrender.
Indeed the Japanese would have continued. We know that because there was an attempted coup against Hirohito to stop the surrender and keep fighting. The coup failed and Hirohito threw in the towel very shortly after that.
So yeah, a significant part of the military leadership wanted to continue the war.
I have never heard that any of them saw the atomic bombs as a “sign” from any higher power.
Nah, Magiver, that’s not how far they were willing to go. They put out an edict calling for even the elderly to arm themselves with bamboo spears and dig themselves bomb shelters. And people actually did so. That’s how far they were willing to take it.
- because I’m not trying to undercut you or call you out for a totally correct statement.
While it’s true that the Japanese military, or at least some leaders thereof, and the Japanese had a fanatic view of combat and a sort-of-bushido code of not surrendering (what passed for bushido in the military government of Japan wouldn’t have been recognizable to feudal-era samurai) it’s taking it a bit far to suggest the Japanese were uniformly ready to fight to the death. Japanese are human beings like anyone else and aren’t lemmings. And after all,
They did, in fact, surrender, and after the fact there was no resistance of any significance to Allied occupation.
By the time the bomb was used, the discipline and order of the Japanese citizenry was starting to break down; in fact, many Japanese were fleeing cities and not showing up for civil defense work. The government had to go to considerable lengths through the use of brutality and intimidation to keep the citizenry in line as much as they did.
Plus, like you just said, it was “atomic bombs” – plural.
It’s one thing for Japan to keep on fighting after the mundane-but-impressive attack on Hiroshima, only deciding to surrender after a mundane-but-impressive attack on Nagasaki some time later. It’s something else entirely to keep on fighting after getting a city-smiting sign from a higher power because, uh, we’ve got this strict policy of needing two such signs from a higher power, see.
While this is true, it’s important that the Japanese themselves were planning to fight to the death. They iddn’t really want to, and wouldn’t have fought well, but they had been told they would be horribly killed anyway. The government essentially told them to go out and kamikaze the entire country. When the Emperor’s surrender was announced, people were stunned to not only have surrendered, but that they had essentially been given a reprieve from death.
Your cite itself notes that it was not only quite rare but occurred because the Japanese soldiers usualy fought to the death. And of course, they frequently attempted fake surrenders to kamikaze U.S. soldiers.
- because I’m not trying to undercut you or call you out for a totally correct statement.
- because people actually ibeyed.